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WARNING:
SOME OF THE LANGUAGE AND/OR SUBJECT MATTER IN MY BLOG MAY BE OFFENSIVE
TO SOME AND IS NOT SUGGESTED READING FOR ANYONE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE.
READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
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Lately I have really been thinking about why I’ve gone from unsuccessful relationship to even-more-unsuccessful relationship to unsuccessful-unhealthly-borderline-psychotic relationship all of my adult life and as much as I’d like to, and as easy as it is to blame it on the other person I’ve come to realize that the main reason why my past relationships haven’t worked out is, well, me. Yours probably didn’t work out because of you too. I’m going to use these posts (notice that they are multi-part ‘cuz I have that many issues) to deconstruct myself. I will be slipping into and out of first and second person in throughout these posts so follow me closely.
Now of course there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being single and fancy free if thats what you really wanna be. But for those of us who may be shopping around for the right one stick around maybe we can help eachother out.
The first reason why my relationships never work out is:
“I take things way too personally way too early.”
You know how when you first start dating someone and everything feels really good but in a weird kinda way. Weird because you’re still trying to feel the person out and you don’t really know their relationship habits yet. Out of sheer eagerness and an effort to get to know the person better we download their every action into our memory for further future analysis.
Let me give you a somewhat fictional example of a burgeoning relationship between me and an anonymous person by the name of Joe Blow. This example isn’t taken from one specific relationship experience but from a compilation of them. I’m sure there will be a few things you can relate to here:
• Me and Joe Blow have been talking for two weeks.
• Joe Blow and I both work but we still manage to find time to call and text eachother.
• Joe Blow has been calling me around 7a every morning at to wake me up
for work. He’s been scheduled to work the last two Saturdays so I’ve
been calling him at 8:30a to wake him up.
• I call Joe Blow when I’m on my way to the train.
• Joe Blow will text me when he gets to work and I’ll text back and
we’ll have light text conversation into the mid-morning before we both
get busy at work.
• I’ll call Joe Blow on my lunch break.
• We may have some light text message conversation in the early afternoon.
• I call him when I’m leaving work.
• He calls me when he gets home from work.
• He slipped up and called me “baby” during that phone conversation.
• I slipped up and liked it and took it to heart.
• We chill at his house tonight.
• He chills at my house 2 days later.
• I called him “baby” during sex. He called me “baby” too.
• When hanging out with his friends for the first time his best friend
alludes to a situation where I would be looked at by someone else and
Joe Blow got jealous. I took it to heart.
• We ran into my best friend later that night and he met Joe Blow for
the first time. The first thing my friend said to us was “This is cute,
I see it for y’all.” And my smile confirmed that I saw it too. Joe Blow
smiled as well, he even chuckled a little. But what did his smile say?
• That next night Joe Blow was going to a house party with his best
friend and he called me before he was leaving. I said something that
made me sound jealous.
• I woke up at 7:15 the next morning. No call.
• 7:49a: I’m walking to the train and I call… 3 rings… voicemail.
• 9:37a: My phone vibrates. It’s my best friend asking “What’s the tea?” No Joe.
• 12:03a: An hour before my lunch break. I start send Joe a text:
“What’s good? What happened to you this morning?”
I stare at it. Maybe I shouldn’t ask him what happened. I may
scare him. Am I coming on too strong? Why did I get jealous about him
going out last night? Why do I care so much? Why am I feeling this way
about him? So I erase it. I type a simple:
“Whaddup homie?”
It’s soul-less, it’s boring, it’s transparent. It’s real bullshit way
for me to hide my feelings. But I pressed the send button and I can’t
take it back now. So off it goes like a boomerang into the distance.
God please let it come back… soon.
• 4:43p: My phone vibrates again. Please God please. It’s my best friend
“Do u n ya date wanna chill w me n ma date 2nite @ BBQ’s?”
I’m not even sure if I still have a ‘date” anymore.
• 6:19p: Still no Joe. I call again. Straight to voicemail. Where the
fuck is this nigga? Is he playing me? This is some bullshit!
Starting to sound familiar?
So what went wrong here? Is Joe Blow just an asshole? Was it me? Was it something that I did? Did I come on too strong? There was a time that when faced with a situation like this these were the thoughts that ran through my head. But thank God for hindsight, being 20/20 and looking at the situation from the outside I have grown into looking at things with a much better perspective. So let’s break things down:
Is Joe Blow just an asshole?
Maybe. He could have very well pulled the proverbial “I-think-I’ve-found-somebody-better-so-instead-of-having-
the-balls-to-break-it-off-with-you-I’ll-just-stop-answering-
your-calls-faggot-ass-bullshit” or my personal favorite the “I-think-things-are-moving-too-fast-so-instead-of-having-the-
balls-to-break-it-off-with-you-I’ll-just-stop-answering-your-
calls-faggot-ass-bullshit” that the gays have made famous. Or on the
other hand he could have been rushing out for work and left his phone
at home. I was so busy taking things to heart and overreacting that I
totally did not consider that possibility.
The truth is that it really doesn’t matter whether Joe is an asshole or not, he can be an elbow or a pinky fingernail for all I care. The person with the problem is you. You are the one that matters here. In a relationship, friendship, partnership or drunk in the back of a cruise ship your actions are all you can claim responsibility for.
The main thing I did wrong was take Joe Blow’s words to heart. People say a lot of things for a lot of reasons. Yeah he called me “baby”. Yeah he got jealous when his friend mentioned other dudes looking at me. What did that make me think? That I was special to him? And I very well could be. But would me not hearing from him for 11 hours make me any less special? If it does it speaks volumes about our whatever we wanna call it. But in these short weeks is there really much to speak about?
I assumed that because he called me “baby” and didn’t totally freak out when I said it back and because he seemed to get a little jealous the other night that I was special. Why, because he said stuff? Unfortunately people say a lot of things, things they don’t necessarily have to mean. Take a look at the situations we were in, what else was he supposed to say?
Infatuation, love (throwing up profusely, given the short time span), the “zsa zsa zu” even (if you are Carrie Bradshaw) is a crazy thing. I was so caught up in everything that was happening that I didn’t take the time to think about things. We would avoid so much if we stopped and thought things over. For example, when Joe didn’t call me when he was supposed to. See I just did it… “supposed to”. I just gave myself undue jurisdiction over when Joe can and cannot call me. Granted, we were kinda developing a groove but nothing was agreed upon. That’s because we never talked about anything. There was a definite lack of communication and a strong dependence on inference. You know what happens when we assume (we end up writing blogs detailing our effed up past relationships).
Next time a Joe doesn’t call when you feel as though he should call. Stop and think about it. Breathe. Maybe Joe wasn’t being an asshole, maybe he really did leave his cell phone at home. Maybe he got caught up in a family situation or hit by a truck, God forbid. Then again he could just be an asshole and if he is, so what? Stop internalizing everything. Everything is not all your fault. Its not Joe as much as it is your internal cross-examination that’s driving you crazy. RELAX!
Either way next time you talk to Joe, really talk to Joe. Tell him how you are feeling. but before you tell him anything, think about your feelings and if they feel the slightest bit rushed or silly maybe they are. If Joe never calls, he just did you a favor. Better two weeks than two years, right?
That post is so true.
In my past that is something I tried to... be mature about. Mature meaning: I tried to learn from other peoples mistakes in reality and on television.
For me, if a guy didn't call or answer his phone when I thought he should have or I expected him to or something a long the lines of that, I tried not to sweat it. I just met him and although I'm liking him I don't know him that well enough to feel the way I do. The internalization got to me and made me act up about it, but I grew up and learned a little bit more. I'm dealing with me and understanding me and what I need to do before I embark on a relationshipial (my merger of relationship and marital) adventure.
While reading your example of Joe Blow it made me think of this guy that was... I wouldn't say the biggest mistake or a big mistake, but he helped in my re-evaluation of my life and my approach to relationships and also showed how naive I was about, guys, love and sex.
Now that I think about it he happened in the year of two thousand and sex (that was the year that I felt I had the most sexual experiences than any other year prior, since I'd become sexually active). I met him online, like all the other guys I've ever met. He was Jamaican (I have this little thing for them), he had grey eyes (I didn't need those, but it was cute and exotic to experience), he was slim, his core was chisled and he had that Jamaican charm (then again a lot of Caribbean men have an adoring charm about them [probably except for me]). I chatted with him online, hit it off, exchanged numbers on the phone and talked for hours on the phone. One day, which I think was the first time I ever talked to him on the phone, we talked from the time I got off the computer with him, through me getting ready for work, while I rode the bus to work (which I opted to do since I was on the phone with him), until I got to work.
The converstaion was great and entertain and heartwarming ang gave me that feeling of great and overwhelming love that I seem to have lost, which I have recently realized is because I'm totally jaded without fully realizing it. Within the converstaion he managed to call me "baby" which I had to uncomfortably (since I liked it, but I didn't want to do something that I felt was moving too fast) tell him I wasn't okay with. He went ahead to try to tell me why he felt okay with it (which seemed like bullshit and made me a hint suspicious). He told me that because of our long and slightly indepth converstaion he was compelled to call me "baby" and felt like we could be. I wasn't that into giving in to that reason. I just let him say. I wasn't gonna say it back since I didn't feel ready to say such a thing. My belief is that when a guy starts getting too endearing so early in the realationship, then he's out for something. And wasn't I right (I'm so great like that). The first time I met him I had sex with him with my friend in the other room (w'at a scandal, I must write that in my story). The second time I saw him, he came to my house, my friend wasn't there, but we had more sex, I had a mishap (it was probably his fault too) and after that he started acting like an ass on the phone and stopped taking my calls. At that point I had gotten over his decent looking face, his sexy-ass body, that lovable dick (I know, w'at a choice of words). He had given me an inkling of his bad attitude and I was over him. I was just a little unsure about whether I wanted to give up on him or see where it went. He was what I was attracted to and I felt like he was the best guy yet (to ever come into my life; loves me my Anita). He wasn't and I was glad when he stopped answering my calls. I wasn't going to hound him and I had a sense that it wasn't gonna work.
He was a decent and very sexy lesson to learn. He pissed me off a lot and made me wish I had my own mafia and I was the don, so I could put a hit out on any guy I felt was out to play me or playing me or played me. (I love Italians) That mafia is such a good idea.